Bathroom Bills and LGBTQ+ Inclusive Policies: Is There Promise?

• In Event: Illusions of Queer Inclusion: On the Promise, Paradox, and Precarity of Pre-K–12 LGBTQ+ Inclusive Educational Policy

Abstract

The goal of this presentation is to bring together conversations about bathroom bills and LGBTQ+ curriculum policies with the goal of finding promise for LGBTQ+ students. Schools and districts across the country have been thrust into the political limelight as they grapple with sometimes competing policy messages about the education of transgender and gender-expansive students. To date, scholarship on trans policies within schools has primarily focused on the law and legal issues or student safety concerns (Archibald, 2016; Baum et al., 2013; Greytak, Kosciw, & Diaz, 2009; Hart, 2014; McGuire, Anderson, Toomey, & Russell, 2010). In the study that we share, we broaden that conversation by exploring families' experiences navigating school systems; we believe parents and guardians of transgender and gender-expansive youth are uniquely qualified to talk about the structures, school systems, policies, and practices that impact their experiences with the school.
In this study, we relied on survey data from 47 families and draw on both critical policy studies (Giroux, 2013, 2017) and critical trans politics (Spade, 2011, 2015) to examine the ways the current policy climate problematically narrows the conversation about transgender students, impacting both the public discourse and the reports of families in our study. Results suggest that for our parents, the real drivers in parents’ perceptions of their school appear to be school safety, individualized supports, supportive and engaged educators, and resources—rather than bathroom access, pronouns, or name changes. They also recognized that policy work, while essential, has certain limitations. One parent noted, “I feel like having an inclusive policy is only the very basic first step.” This does not suggest policy decisions are unimportant; the consequences of inadequate policy can be disastrous for trans students and families. However, an exclusive focus on bathroom bills and other anti-trans rhetoric has co-opted a conversation that families and trans youth should drive. We ultimately conclude that the discourse surrounding how to support trans youth in schools needs to be elevated to address broader structural issues, including the construction of gender and cis-heteronormativity within school systems and cultures.
Elevating that discourse, we will focus on LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum policy in the second part of our presentation. The primary aim of the article that we will share is to bring together concepts and commitments from liberal and queer theories to design an integrated framework for education policy analysis and implementation: a queer democratic framework. In keeping with related theory-building (Eng, 2010; Gamson, 1995; Mayo, 2006, 2007; Phelan, 2000), we aim toward a stronger conceptual bridge between queer and liberal theories. As such, we follow Cohen’s (2005) thinking that “[a]t the intersections of oppression and resistance lies the radical potential for queerness to challenge and bring together all those deemed marginal and all those committed to liberatory politics” (p. 24). We use the case of the Fair Accurate Inclusive and Respectful Education Act (FAIR) throughout the article as an exemplar of how queer policy analysis and implementation change the terms of the policy discussion. However, we argue that FAIR can only go so far as an example of a policy that comes out of liberal democratic theory. It is symbolic and positive but cannot reach emancipatory aims in practice without queer analysis and implementation.

Authors

• Bethy Leonardi, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Amy N. Farley, University of Cincinnati